Islamic State – News ABChttp://newsabc.net
Thu, 27 Jul 2017 14:24:58 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.8.4Syrian army announces recapture of Palmyra from Islamic Statehttp://newsabc.net/syrian-army-announces-recapture-of-palmyra-from-islamic-state/
Fri, 03 Mar 2017 04:37:24 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=6504The Syrian army said on Thursday it had recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State for the second time in a year, with help from allied forces and Russian warplanes. Islamic State seized Palmyra in a surprise advance in December, after having been driven out eight months before. “With backing from the Syrian …

]]>The Syrian army said on Thursday it had recaptured the ancient city of Palmyra from Islamic State for the second time in a year, with help from allied forces and Russian warplanes.FILE PHOTO: A road sign is pictured in Palmyra city, Syria, May 19, 2015. REUTERS/Stringer/File Photo

Islamic State seized Palmyra in a surprise advance in December, after having been driven out eight months before.

“With backing from the Syrian and Russian air forces, units of our armed forces recaptured the city of Palmyra, in cooperation with the allies,” the military said in a statement.

The army and Iranian-backed militia advanced inside Palmyra on Thursday as Islamic State withdrew completely, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a Britain-based war monitor, said.

Islamic State militants retreated to areas in the east, the Observatory reported. Government forces took control of swathes of Palmyra and conducted combing operations to clear mines on Thursday, it said.

During Islamic State’s first occupation which ended in March last year, the ultra-hardline jihadist group destroyed some of Palmyra’s priceless archaeological heritage. It is believed to have razed other parts of the historical ruins after regaining control in December.

The Syrian army is also fighting Islamic State east of Aleppo city, where it is pushing to reach the Euphrates river, and in the city of Deir al-Zor, where it controls an enclave besieged by the militants.

Islamic State is on the back foot in Syria after losing territory in the north to an alliance of U.S.-backed, Kurdish-led militias, and to Turkey-backed Syrian rebel groups.

Government and opposition delegations are attending U.N.-sponsored peace talks in Geneva, where the government’s chief negotiator hailed Syrian President Bashar al-Assad for keeping his promise to retake Palmyra.

The Syrian opposition however declined to congratulate Assad on capturing Palmyra and suggested the sight of the city changing hands again was risible.

(Reporting By Ellen Francis and Angus McDowall in Beirut, additional reporting by Tom Miles, John Irish, and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva,; Editing by Robin Pomeroy and Dominic Evans)

]]>Iraqi forces close in on Tigris in Islamic State stronghold Mosulhttp://newsabc.net/iraqi-forces-close-in-on-tigris-in-islamic-state-stronghold-mosul/
Sun, 08 Jan 2017 03:40:04 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=5728Iraqi special forces closed in on the Tigris river that runs through central Mosul on Saturday, advancing in parallel with other troops and forcing Islamic State to retreat in its last major stronghold in the country. Islamic State has been driven out of more than half the areas it held east of the Tigris river, …

]]>Iraqi special forces closed in on the Tigris river that runs through central Mosul on Saturday, advancing in parallel with other troops and forcing Islamic State to retreat in its last major stronghold in the country.Iraqi forces backed by tribal militias during battle to retake a village from the Islamic State on the eastern bank of the river Tigris, Iraq December 7, 2016. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem – RTSV1GE

Islamic State has been driven out of more than half the areas it held east of the Tigris river, which bisects the city, but is still in control of the west. It will be harder for the jihadists to defend Mosul once Iraqi forces reach the river.

Baghdad meanwhile said it had come to an agreement with Ankara over a demand for withdrawal of Turkish forces from an area close to Mosul as the two regional powers sought to improve ties following a year-long spat over the military deployment.

In a visit to Iraq, Turkey’s prime minister did not say a deal had been reached, but that the issue was discussed and would be resolved.

Tension between the two neighbours in the run-up to the U.S.-backed campaign to drive Islamic State from Mosul, which began in October, has been just one sign of the coming struggle for influence over Iraq’s second city even once the jihadists have been driven out.

The battle for the city has yet to be won but is beginning to make quicker progress.

Iraqi counter-terrorism forces pushed to within several hundred metres (yards) of the Tigris and a strategic bridge on Saturday, the closest they have been, after staging an unprecedented nighttime assault the day before in a nearby district, a spokesman said.

Advances in recent days have driven militants out of several additional areas east of the river.

The counter-terrorism service (CTS) spokesman said new tactics and better coordination were helping.

“Counter-terrorism forces have been sent about 500 metres from the fourth bridge,” Sabah al-Numan told reporters east of Mosul.

A coalition spokesman said on Twitter that Islamic State had damaged the fourth bridge in a “desperate act” as they lost ground. The bridge has already been hit by U.S.-led air strikes to prevent the militants sending reinforcements across the city.

CTS seized the Ghufran district, also known as al-Baath, and entered adjacent Wahda, Numan said.

A separate military statement said Iraqi federal police had recaptured a hospital complex in Wahda in southeastern Mosul, a significant turnaround after U.S.-backed army units were forced to withdraw from the site last month under fierce counter-attacks from Islamic State.

CTS and federal police “are now moving in parallel on both axes” in southeastern Mosul, Numan said.

“We are proceeding side by side … and advancing at the same level. This is a very important factor, thanks to which Daesh (Islamic State) has not been able to move its fighters. It has to support one axis (front) at the expense of another.”

“We have worn down the terrorist organisation with this type of advance.”

TURKISH WITHDRAWAL DISCUSSED

Senior CTS commanders met on Saturday at a makeshift outpost in eastern Mosul where life in areas recaptured from Islamic State is slowly returning to normal despite heavy damage to homes and infrastructure.

Residents lined the streets and vendors sold produce, eggs and meat in areas where clashes raged just a few weeks earlier.

One of the generals handed out chocolates to neighbourhood children beside a column of black Humvees as the distant sound of explosions rang out.

Friday’s nighttime operation, launched after a week of planning, had been a particular success, Numan said.

CTS forces using night-vision equipment crossed the Khosr river, a tributary that runs perpendicular to the Tigris through eastern Mosul, via a makeshift earth bridge after Islamic State had destroyed permanent ones, he said.

Air strikes from the U.S.-led coalition sped that advance into Muthanna district.

The CTS and federal police are part of a 100,000-strong Iraqi force made up of the military, Kurdish fighters and Shi’ite militias, backed by U.S.-led coalition air power.

Some Sunni Muslim and Kurdish peshmerga units participating in the campaign received training from by Turkish forces at the Bashiqa camp northeast of Mosul.

Turkey’s military presence in northern Iraq since well before the Mosul campaign has angered Baghdad, and the two countries traded barbs over the issue shortly before it began on Oct. 17.

]]>Islamic State claims suicide attacks as Mosul campaign makes slow progresshttp://newsabc.net/islamic-state-claims-suicide-attacks-as-mosul-campaign-makes-slow-progress/
Tue, 15 Nov 2016 03:09:07 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4870Islamic State claimed a series of suicide attacks that killed at least 14 people south and west of Baghdad on Monday as a U.S.-backed campaign to capture Mosul, the insurgents’ last urban stronghold in Iraq, made slow progress. The attacks showed that even though the jihadists have been losing territory over the past year – …

]]>Islamic State claimed a series of suicide attacks that killed at least 14 people south and west of Baghdad on Monday as a U.S.-backed campaign to capture Mosul, the insurgents’ last urban stronghold in Iraq, made slow progress.A member of Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) fighter holds his weapon during a battle with Islamic State militants in west of Mosul, Iraq November 14, 2016. REUTERS/Stringer

The attacks showed that even though the jihadists have been losing territory over the past year – and face a big battle to hold Mosul in the north – they retain the ability to strike across Iraq, even in the central areas near the capital.

Eight people were killed and about 25 wounded when two suicide bombers blew up their cars at police checkpoints in Falluja, a former Islamic State stronghold west of Baghdad.

A suicide bomber killed six people and wounded another six in a rural area near Kerbala, a holy Shi’ite city south of the capital where preparations are underway for a major religious event.

The casualty figures were obtained from police sources.

The bomber near Kerbala blew himself up west of the city where hundreds of thousands of Shi’ites were gathering to mark Arbaeen, which comes at the end of a 40-day mourning period to mark the death of Imam Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Mohammed.

Islamic State has been retreating since last year and was driven out of Falluja in June. In Iraq, the group continues to control territory west of Mosul, the northern city from where it declared a “caliphate” over parts of Syria and Iraq in 2014.

With air and ground support from the U.S.-led coalition, the offensive on Mosul entered its fifth week on Monday with Iraqi government forces still trying to consolidate gains made in the eastern edge of the city that they breached end of October.

A mixed Kurdish and Yazidi armed force known as the Sinjar Resistance Unit said on Monday it had dislodged the jihadists from five Yazidi villages west of Mosul in an advance that began on Saturday.

Islamic State fighters overran the five villages in 2014 when it swept over Sinjar mountain and the surrounding region inhabited by Yazidis, killing, capturing and enslaving thousands from the Iraqi religious minority.

U.S.-backed Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish forces took back the city of Sinjar and most of the mountain area in 2015 but the region south of the mountain remained in the hands of the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim militants.

Iraqi government forces, who are supported by Kurdish peshmerga fighters and Iranian-backed Shi’ite militias, are yet to cross into the northern and southern limits of Mosul, where more than a million people are thought to be still living.

About 54,000 have been displaced by the fighting from villages and towns around the city to government-held areas, according to U.N. estimates.

The figure does not include the tens of thousands of people rounded up in villages around Mosul and forced to accompany Islamic State fighters to cover their retreat toward the city.

]]>Iraq troops aim to tighten noose on Islamic State in Mosulhttp://newsabc.net/iraq-troops-aim-to-tighten-noose-on-islamic-state-in-mosul/
Mon, 14 Nov 2016 03:39:41 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4854Iraqi soldiers fighting just north of Mosul, within sight of city neighborhoods, said on Sunday they were ready to tighten the noose around Islamic State militants waging a brutal defense of their Iraqi stronghold. Four weeks into the campaign to crush Islamic State in Mosul, the city is almost surrounded but the jihadists’ defenses have …

]]>Iraqi soldiers fighting just north of Mosul, within sight of city neighborhoods, said on Sunday they were ready to tighten the noose around Islamic State militants waging a brutal defense of their Iraqi stronghold.Displaced people flee Samah neighborhood in a military vehicle of the Iraqi army during a fight between the Islamic State militants and the Iraqi Counter Terrorism Service, in Mosul November 13, 2016. REUTERS/Ahmed Jadallah

Four weeks into the campaign to crush Islamic State in Mosul, the city is almost surrounded but the jihadists’ defenses have so far been breached only to the east, where they have battled elite troops for control of around a dozen districts.

The battle for Mosul, the biggest city held by the ultra-hardline Sunni Islamist group in Iraq and Syria, is the largest military operation in Iraq in a decade of turmoil unleashed by the 2003 U.S. invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.

Iraq’s Shi’ite-led government, which has assembled a 100,000-strong coalition of troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and mainly Shi’ite militias, backed by U.S. air power, says it will mark the end of Islamic State in Iraq.

But it says the fight will be a long one.

An army special forces officer on the northern front line said his men aimed to target Hadba, the first neighborhood ahead of them within city limits. The district was visible from his position in the village of Bawiza.

Brigadier Ali Abdulla said Islamic State fighters had been pushed out of Bawiza and another village, Saada, although progress had been slowed by the presence of civilians he said were being used by the militants as human shields.

“Our approach (to Hadba) will be very slow and cautious so that we can reach the families and free them from Daesh’s (Islamic State’s) grip,” Abdulla said.

One man who escaped from Saada to Bawiza with his young son and daughter said they had to move from house to house and hide among sheep to avoid being caught by Islamic State fighters.

The timing of the decision to move on Hadba would depend on progress on other fronts, Abdulla said. Security forces are advancing to the south of Mosul, targeting the city’s airport on the west bank of the Tigris river.

Abdulla said Islamic State was using suicide car bombs, roadside bombs, snipers and long range mortars to try to hold back the army advance in the north – all tactics it has used to lethal effect on the eastern front as well.

Another officer, Captain Oqba Nafaa, said the militants were still fighting in Saada, using a network of tunnels to carry out surprise strikes on the attacking forces.

The urban warfare tactics were similar to those they have deployed to lethal effect in the east of the city against elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS) forces and an armored division.

In some districts, control has changed hands three or four times as the militants, using tunnels and exploiting the presence of civilians as cover, have launched night-time attacks and reversed military gains of the previous day.

One resident of al-Qadisiya al-Thaniya district, which the CTS entered on Friday, said the special forces later pulled back and Islamic State fighters returned.

“They came back to us again, and this is what we feared. At night there were fierce clashes and we heard powerful explosions,” she told Reuters.

A military statement later said that CTS forces had cleared all militants from two districts of eastern Mosul, Arbajiya and Karkukli, and were still clearing three others.

TROOPS TAKE NIMRUD

About 30 km (20 miles) south of Mosul, troops recaptured the 3,000-year-old Assyrian city of Nimrud which was overrun by Islamic State militants two years ago, a military source said.

Nimrud, once the capital of an empire stretching across the ancient Middle East, is one of several historic sites looted and ransacked by the militants, who deem the country’s pre-Islamic religious heritage idolatrous.

Iraq’s deputy culture minister, Qais Hussain Rasheed, said that recapturing the remains of Iraq’s rich heritage from the jihadists represented a triumph for the world.

Islamic State still controls other Assyrian landmarks including the ruins of Nineveh and Khorsabad, as well as the 2,000-year-old desert city of Hatra.

“Liberation of ancient Iraqi archaeological sites from the control of forces of dark and evil is a victory not only to Iraqis but for all humanity,” Rasheed, deputy minister for tourism and antiquities at the culture ministry, told Reuters.

The scale of the damage inflicted on the sites is not completely clear, but Iraqi officials say many buildings have been totally destroyed.

More than 54,000 people have been forced to flee their homes so far in the Mosul campaign.

The Norwegian Refugee Council said on Sunday tens of thousands of people “lack access to water, food, electricity and basic health services” in areas recaptured by the army in Mosul and surrounding towns and villages.

Ultimately, 700,000 people were likely to need shelter, food, water or medical support.

In the north of the country, Iraqi Kurdish fighters battling Islamic State unlawfully destroyed Arab homes in scores of towns and villages in what may amount to a war crime, the U.S.-based rights group Human Rights Watch said on Sunday.

]]>Islamic State abducts more than 200 near Mosul, retreats with thousands: U.N.http://newsabc.net/islamic-state-abducts-more-than-200-near-mosul-retreats-with-thousands-u-n/
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 14:00:46 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4772Islamic State fighters abducted 295 former Iraqi Security Forces members near the militant stronghold of Mosul and also forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from Hammam al Alil town, the United Nations human rights organization said on Tuesday. The abductions took place last week as Iraqi government forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi’ite militias backed …

]]>Islamic State fighters abducted 295 former Iraqi Security Forces members near the militant stronghold of Mosul and also forced 1,500 families to retreat with them from Hammam al Alil town, the United Nations human rights organization said on Tuesday.A member of Peshmerga forces inspects a tunnel used by Islamic State militants in the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudani

The abductions took place last week as Iraqi government forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi’ite militias backed by U.S.-led air strikes pushed an offensive to recapture Mosul from Islamic State.

“People forcibly moved or abducted, it appears, are either intended to be used as human shields or – depending on their perceived affiliations – killed,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights.

About 100 of the former ISF officers were taken at around midnight on Nov. 3 from Mawaly village, which is about 20 km (12 miles) west of Mosul. A further 195 were abducted between Nov. 1 and Nov. 4 from villages in Tal Afar district.

The abducted families were being taken from their town to Mosul airport, Shamdasani said.

“The fate of these civilians is unknown for the moment,” she told a U.N. briefing in Geneva.

The United Nations also had information that at least 30 sheikhs were abducted in Sinjar district on Nov. 2 or Nov. 3 and taken to an unknown location. It was trying to verify a report that 18 of them had been killed on Nov. 4 in Tal Afar district, Shamdasani said.

The operation against Islamic State’s Iraqi stronghold has entered its fourth week and Iraqi forces have so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.

The U.N. human rights office has sources on the ground but the information they are able to provide is “patchy”, Shamdasani said.

She could not confirm media reports of a mass grave being found but said it happened to be in the same agricultural college in Hammam al Alil where the U.N. reported the execution of 50 police officers last month.

]]>Iraq peshmerga storm Islamic State town as army battles in Mosulhttp://newsabc.net/iraq-peshmerga-storm-islamic-state-town-as-army-battles-in-mosul/
Tue, 08 Nov 2016 04:03:10 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4756Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces stormed an Islamic State-held town northeast of Mosul on Monday, clearing a pocket of militants outside the city while Iraqi troops wage a fierce urban war with the jihadists in its eastern neighborhoods. As the operation against Islamic State’s Iraqi stronghold entered its fourth week, fighters across the border launched an …

]]>Iraqi Kurdish peshmerga forces stormed an Islamic State-held town northeast of Mosul on Monday, clearing a pocket of militants outside the city while Iraqi troops wage a fierce urban war with the jihadists in its eastern neighborhoods.Smoke rises during clashes between Peshmerga forces and Islamic State militants in the town of Bashiqa, east of Mosul, during an operation to attack Islamic State militants in Mosul, Iraq, November 7, 2016. REUTERS/Azad Lashkari

As the operation against Islamic State’s Iraqi stronghold entered its fourth week, fighters across the border launched an offensive in the Syrian half of the jihadist group’s self-declared caliphate, targeting its base in the city of Raqqa.

An alliance of U.S.-backed Kurdish and Arab groups launched the campaign for Raqqa, where Islamic State has been dug in for nearly three years, with an assault on territory about 50 km (30 miles) to the north which they have dubbed Euphrates Anger.

The battle for Raqqa will be every bit as challenging as the one for Mosul, with both cities carrying huge strategic and symbolic value to the jihadists and their self-declared caliphate covering territory in both Syria and Iraq.

The Iraqi operation, involving a 100,000-strong alliance of troops, security forces, Kurdish peshmerga and Shi’ite militias, backed by U.S.-led air strikes and a global consensus against the jihadis, has so far gained just a small foothold in Mosul.

The Raqqa campaign, launched amid a complex civil war in Syria which has divided world powers, is not coordinated with President Bashar al-Assad or the Syrian army. The Kurdish element of SDF groups fighting toward Raqqa also makes them an unlikely force to recapture the Arab city.

“It is difficult to put a time frame on the operation at present. The battle will not be easy,” a Syrian Kurdish source said.

BATTLE FOR BASHIQA

In Bashiqa, some 15 km (10 miles) from Mosul, a 2,000-strong peshmerga force sought to drive out the militants from the town, which lies on the Nineveh plains at the foot of a mountain.

Artillery pounded the town before the Kurdish peshmerga and U.S. special forces entered the town in armored vehicles, Humvees and on foot.

“Our aim is to take control and clear out all the Daesh (Islamic State) militants,” Lieutenant-Colonel Safeen Rasoul told Reuters as the operation began. “Our estimates are there are about 100 still left and 10 suicide cars.”

Islamic State fighters have sought to slow the offensive on their Mosul stronghold with waves of suicide car bomb attacks. Iraqi commanders say there have been 100 on the eastern front and 140 in the south.

A top Kurdish official told Reuters on Sunday the jihadists had also deployed drones strapped with explosives, long-range artillery shells filled with chlorine gas and mustard gas, and snipers.

As a peshmerga column moved into Bashiqa on Monday, a loud explosion rocked the convoy, and two large plumes of white smoke could be seen just 50 feet (15 meters) away. A peshmerga officer said two suicide car bombs had tried to hit the advancing force.

“They are surrounded… If they want to surrender, OK. If they don’t, they will be killed,” said Lieutenant-Colonel Qandeel Mahmoud, standing next to a Humvee, supported by a cane he said he has needed since he was wounded in the leg by two suicide car bombers four months ago.

Armed U.S. soldiers, part of a 5,000-strong force Washington says is advising and supporting the Iraqi offensive, were accompanying the peshmerga in Bashiqa through streets lined by rows of damaged houses, some with entire floors collapsed.

Fighting was intense and at one stage a convoy of 40 vehicles was held up by a single Islamic State sniper.

Kurdish military authorities later said the peshmerga were carrying out house-to-house searches in the town.

In eastern districts of Mosul, which Iraqi special forces broke into last week, officers say jihadists melted into the population, ambushing and isolating troops in what the special forces spokesman called the world’s “toughest urban warfare”.

TWIN OFFENSIVES

Mosul, the largest Islamic State-controlled city in either Iraq or Syria, has been held by the group since its fighters drove the army out of northern Iraq in June 2014. The campaign to retake it is the most complex military operation in Iraq since the 2003 U.S. invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.

Twin offensives on Raqqa and Mosul could bring to an end the caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque in 2014.

Baghdadi, whose whereabouts are unknown but who is believed to be in northern Iraq close to the Syrian border, has told his followers not to retreat in the “total war” with their enemies.

They have lost ground on all fronts, however, despite waging a fierce and brutal defense.

One Mosul resident told Reuters by phone he had seen 30 bodies and about 40 seriously wounded people brought into Salam Hospital, used by Islamic State to treat its casualties.

Elsewhere in the city, three residents said the Islamic State presence across Mosul was far less visible than in recent days, but cautioned that the militants had dropped out of view before and then reappeared en masse.

Others said there were signs that some of Islamic State’s local supporters had fled, including one family whose son joined the jihadists when they took over Mosul. The family fled without warning, and two days later Islamic State put up signs on their empty house which read: Property of Islamic State.

Some were frustrated and frightened by what they said was the slow army advance. “We’re asking ourselves what’s happening? We were expecting the Iraqi forces to reach us much quicker,” he said.

To the south of Mosul, security forces said they had recaptured and secured the town of Hammam al-Alil from Islamic State fighters, who they said had kept thousands of residents as human shields as well as marching many others alongside retreating militants toward Mosul as cover from air strikes.

The United Nations has warned of a possible exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees from a city which is still home to up to 1.5 million people. So far 34,000 have been displaced, the International Organization for Migration said.

Security forces on the southern front have continued their advance, reaching within 4 km (2-1/2 miles) of Mosul’s airport, on the southern edge of the city and on the western bank of the Tigris River which runs through its center.

To the north, a military statement said the army’s Sixteenth Infantry Division had also recaptured the village of Bawiza and entered another area, Sada, on the city’s northern limits, further tightening the circle of forces around Islamic State.

Shi’ite militias known as Popular Mobilisation forces are also fighting to the west of Mosul to seal the routes to the Islamic State-held town of Tal Afar and its territory in neighboring Syria, to prevent any retreat or reinforcement.

]]>U.S.-backed Syrian alliance declares attack on Islamic State in Raqqahttp://newsabc.net/u-s-backed-syrian-alliance-declares-attack-on-islamic-state-in-raqqa/
Mon, 07 Nov 2016 03:19:14 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4740A U.S.-backed alliance of Syrian armed groups has launched an operation to retake the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State in Syria, the group said on Sunday. The new offensive ratchets up pressure on Islamic State at a critical moment, with its fighters already battling an assault by Iraqi security …

]]>A U.S.-backed alliance of Syrian armed groups has launched an operation to retake the northern city of Raqqa, the de facto capital of Islamic State in Syria, the group said on Sunday.A U.S. fighter walks down a ladder from a barricade, north of Raqqa city, Syria November 6, 2016. REUTERS/Rodi Said

The new offensive ratchets up pressure on Islamic State at a critical moment, with its fighters already battling an assault by Iraqi security forces on their remaining Iraqi stronghold in the northern city of Mosul.

A statement issued by the U.S.-backed Syria Democratic Forces (SDF), an alliance of Kurdish and Arab armed groups, said the long anticipated campaign, called Euphrates Anger, started late on Saturday.

“The general command of the Syria Democratic Forces announces the blessed start of its major military campaign to liberate the city of Raqqa,” Jehan Sheikh Amad, an SDF spokeswoman, told a news conference in the Syrian town of Ain Issa, 50 km (30 miles) north of Raqqa.

The United States would be coordinating air strikes with the SDF, which includes the powerful Kurdish YPG militia and has been the main partner on the ground in Syria for the U.S.-led coalition against Islamic State.

Raqqa is the Syrian bastion of the ultra-hardline Sunni Muslim Islamic State, from where it runs training camps and directs operations. The group has been overseeing civilian life in the city including bakeries, banks, schools and mosques.

Brett McGurk, U.S. President Barack Obama’s counter-Islamic State envoy, told reporters during a stopover in Amman that the “initial phase” of the Raqqa offensive had begun.

“The Raqqa campaign will proceed in phases, deliberate phases, there is an isolation phase which began today and subsequent phases to ensure we kick out Daesh out of Raqqa,” McGurk said.

The SDF statement said the operation aimed to “isolate and then topple the capital of international terrorism”, indicating an initial phase aimed to surround Raqqa before any move to seize it. No timeframe was given.

CONCERNS

Planning for the Raqqa offensive has been complicated by factors including Turkish concerns about expanding Kurdish influence in northern Syria and fears of Arabs who are worried about a Kurdish presence in the predominantly Arab city.

The SDF said on Thursday it had rejected any Turkish involvement in the Raqqa campaign. The Turkey-backed rebels fighting under the Free Syrian Army banner and the YPG and its allies are hostile to each other, and have clashed repeatedly.

Turkey has said Raqqa would be targeted in its own operation against Islamic State in northern Syria, which it is waging with Syrian Arab rebels.

McGurk said the “vanguard” of SDF forces entering Raqqa would be comprised of ethnic Arabs, not Kurdish fighters who form the backbone of SDF forces.

“When it comes to Raqqa we want a force that ultimately liberates Raqqa that is primarily from the local area, Arabs from the area, and so we have trained many of these fighters and that force will continue to grow as we get to the subsequent phases of the campaign,” McGurk told reporters.

The SDF also said Arab groups would be taking part in the operation and called on Raqqa’s civilians to avoid areas where Islamic State militants are present and to go to “liberated territory”.

An attack on Raqqa has been long expected, with U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter saying on Oct. 25 that the battle to retake it would “overlap” with the assault on Mosul.

The top U.S. military commander in Iraq, Army Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, said last month that the U.S.-led coalition fighting Islamic State wanted to move urgently to isolate Raqqa because of concerns about the group using the city as a base to plan and launch attacks against targets abroad.

France has also pushed for simultaneous action on both fronts. President Francois Hollande said last month there was evidence that Islamic State fighters were fleeing to Raqqa, and that everything must be done to stop them regrouping there.

French Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on Sunday that an offensive on Raqqa should be launched while the battle to push the group out of Mosul is under way.

“We have to go to Raqqa … it will automatically be local forces that will liberate Raqqa even if French forces, U.S. forces, the coalition contribute with air strikes to dismantle Daesh,” Le Drian told Europe 1 radio, using an Arabic acronym for Islamic State.

“Mosul-Raqqa can’t be disassociated because Islamic State and the territories it occupies span that area,” he said.

Since it was formed in early 2015, the SDF has seized swathes of territory along the Syria-Turkey border from Islamic State and pushed the jihadist group back to within 30 km (18 miles) of Raqqa.

(Reporting by Suleiman Al-Khalidi in Amman, Tom Perry in Beirut, John Irish and Gus Trompiz in Paris; Writing by Adrian Croft; Editing by Ros Russell)

]]>Iraqi forces fighting Islamic State say nearing Mosul airporthttp://newsabc.net/iraqi-forces-fighting-islamic-state-say-nearing-mosul-airport/
Sun, 06 Nov 2016 04:38:56 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4724Iraqi security forces drove Islamic State fighters from the center of a town just south of the militants’ main stronghold of Mosul on Saturday and reached within a few km (miles) of an airport on the edge of the city, a senior commander said. Lieutenant-General Raed Shakir Jawdat said security forces were in control of …

]]>Iraqi security forces drove Islamic State fighters from the center of a town just south of the militants’ main stronghold of Mosul on Saturday and reached within a few km (miles) of an airport on the edge of the city, a senior commander said.A tank of Iraqi security forces is seen during a battle with Islamic State militants in Ali Rash, southeast of Mosul, Iraq November 5, 2016. REUTERS/Thaier Al-Sudaini

Lieutenant-General Raed Shakir Jawdat said security forces were in control of the center of Hammam al-Alil, about 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, although he did not say whether the militants had been pushed out completely.

The advance on the southern front comes days after Iraqi special forces fought their way into the eastern side of Mosul, taking control of six neighborhoods according to Iraqi officials and restoring a foothold in the city for the first time since the army retreated ignominiously two years ago.

Another unit advanced further north up the western bank of the Tigris river on Saturday, Jawdat added. “Our elite forces have reached an area just 4 km (2 1/2 miles) from Mosul airport,” he told Al-Hurra television channel.

Recapturing Mosul would crush the Iraqi half of a caliphate declared by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque in 2014. His Islamist group also controls large parts of east Syria.

There were no reports of further gains in the east of the city on Saturday, and officers said the military was clearing areas it took in recent days.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, speaking on a visit to the eastern front, said he brought “a message to the residents inside Mosul who are hostages in the hands of Daesh (Islamic State) – we will liberate you soon”.

Abadi said progress in the nearly three-week-old campaign, and the advance into Mosul itself, had been faster than expected. But in the face of fierce resistance, which has included suicide car bombings, sniper fire and roadside bombs, he suggested that progress may be intermittent.

“Our heroic forces will not retreat and will not be broken. Maybe in the face of terrorist acts, criminal acts, there will be some delay,” he said.

General Jawdat said his forces had destroyed 17 bomb-laden cars which had targeted them on their advance north.

So far the army controls only a small part of Mosul which was home to 2 million people before Islamic State took over in 2014. More than 1 million remain in the city – by far the largest under Islamic State control in either Iraq or Syria.

A Reuters correspondent in the village of Ali Rash, about 7 km (4 miles) southeast of the city, saw smoke rising from eastern districts on Saturday, while air strikes, artillery and gunfire could be heard.

The United Nations has warned of a possible exodus of hundreds of thousands of refugees. So far only 31,000 have been displaced, of which more than 3,000 have already returned to their homes, said William Lacy Swing, head of the International Organization for Migration.

“The numbers are not as large so far as had been expected. We’d heard figures all the way up to 500,000 or 700,000,” he told Reuters.

“We’re trying to prepare accordingly, but it’s very difficult to do contingency planning with any level of accuracy because we don’t know what they’re going to find when they get inside”.

LAST TOWN BEFORE MOSUL

The assault on Hammam al-Alil, about 15 km (10 miles) south of Mosul, targeted a force of at least 70 Islamic State fighters there, commander of the Mosul operations Major-General Najm al-Jabouri said.

Jabouri said the assault began around 10 a.m. (0700 GMT) and some militants had tried to escape across the river, although others put up heavy resistance and the troops had thwarted three attempted suicide car bombings.

“(The battle) is very important – it’s the last town for us before Mosul,” Jabouri told reporters. Iraqi helicopters were supporting the army, he said, backed also by jets from a U.S.-led air coalition.

He said the jihadists were using hundreds of people as human shields, although it was not clear how many civilians were left in the town. Before Islamic State swept in more than two years ago, Hammam al-Alil and outlying villages had a population of 65,000.

As well as forcing residents to stay as they came under attack in Hammam al-Alil, Islamic State fighters retreating north in the last two weeks have forced thousands to march with them as cover from air strikes, villagers have told Reuters.

The United Nations said the militants transported 1,600 abducted civilians from Hammam al-Alil to the town of Tal Afar, west of Mosul, on Tuesday and took another 150 families from the town to Mosul the next day.

Jabouri said a man he described as a senior Islamic State figure, Ammar Salih Ahmed Abu Bakr, was killed by federal police – who are fighting with the army in Hammam al-Alil – as he tried to escape by car.

Many of the remaining militants were non-Iraqis, he said. “There are at least 70 Daesh fighters in the town. The majority are foreign fighters, so they don’t know where to go. They are just moving from place to place.”

]]>Islamic State leader says ‘no retreat’ from Mosul assaulthttp://newsabc.net/islamic-state-leader-says-no-retreat-from-mosul-assault/
Fri, 04 Nov 2016 03:49:07 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4690Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told his followers on Thursday there could be no retreat in a “total war” against the forces arrayed against them, as advancing soldiers battled into their northern Iraqi stronghold of Mosul. Expressing confidence that his Islamic State fighters would prevail against Shi’ite Muslims, Western “crusaders” and Sunni “apostate” countries …

]]>Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi told his followers on Thursday there could be no retreat in a “total war” against the forces arrayed against them, as advancing soldiers battled into their northern Iraqi stronghold of Mosul.Tribal fighters walk as fire and smoke rises from oil wells, set ablaze by Islamic State militants in the oil-producing region of Qayyara, Iraq. REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

Expressing confidence that his Islamic State fighters would prevail against Shi’ite Muslims, Western “crusaders” and Sunni “apostate” countries Turkey and Saudi Arabia, Baghdadi called on the jihadists fighting in Mosul to “wreak havoc”.

“This raging battle and total war, and the great jihad that the state of Islam is fighting today only increases our firm belief, God willing, and our conviction that all this is a prelude to victory,” Baghdadi said in an audio recording released online by supporters.

Iraqi regular troops and special forces, Shi’ite militias, Kurdish peshmerga fighters and other groups backed by U.S.-led air strikes launched a campaign two weeks ago to retake Mosul.

Winning back the city would signal the defeat of the Iraqi half of a crossborder caliphate which Baghdadi declared from the pulpit of a Mosul mosque two years ago. Islamic State also holds large parts of neighboring Syria.

In his first audio message released in nearly a year, Baghdadi called on the population of Mosul’s Nineveh province “not to weaken in the jihad” against the “enemies of God”.

He also called on the group’s suicide fighters to “turn the nights of the unbelievers into days, to wreak havoc in their land and make their blood flow as rivers”.

Those tempted to flee should “know that the value of staying on your land with honor is a thousand times better than the price of retreating with shame”.

ROCKET FIRE

Shortly after Baghdadi’s speech was released at around 2 a.m., residents said heavy explosions shook eastern Mosul. One said the militants fired dozens of rockets towards the Intisar, Quds and Samah districts where soldiers have been closing in.

“We heard the sounds of rockets firing one after the other and saw them flashing through the air. The house was shaking and we were terrified, not knowing what was taking place.”

Fighters were on the street, unusually showing their faces, he said. “They were saying ‘We will fight till death. The caliph gave us a morale boost to fight the infidels’,” he said. nL8N1D42Y1]

Another witness from the Hadba neighborhood of north Mosul said that Islamic State vehicles patrolled the area and blasted out Baghdadi’s speech, urging fighters to hold their positions.

Outside the city’s eastern limits, hundreds of civilians streamed out, packed into cars, pickups and trucks, waving white flags and hooting horns. Cows and sheep also filled the road from Kokjali, on the eastern edge of Mosul.

Fleeing residents said there had been heavy mortar fire launched by retreating Islamic State fighters.

By mid-morning, a Reuters correspondent in Kokjali saw smoke rising from inside Mosul but there were no sounds of fighting.

After special forces broke through Islamic State defensive lines in the east this week, troops from the army’s Ninth Armoured Division breached the southeastern perimeter of the city on Thursday, advancing towards the Mithaq and Intisar neighborhoods, a colonel in the division said.

Four soldiers were killed when two armored personnel carriers were hit by rocket and mortar fire, he said. Despite the heavy resistance, the soldiers made advances during the day, according to a military statement later on Thursday.

A senior special forces commander said troops were fighting in four neighborhoods in the east, and if they made further progress they might try to sweep through the eastern half of the city all the way to the River Tigris, bypassing some districts.

“If I want to speed up the operation, we may not take some areas and instead isolate them to prevent movement. That would reduce the time needed to reach the right bank,” Lieutenant-General Abdul Ghani al-Assadi, commander of Iraq’s elite Counter Terrorism Service (CTS), told Reuters.

The exact location of Baghdadi, an Iraqi whose real name is Ibrahim al-Samarrai, is not clear. Reports have said he may be in Mosul itself, or in Islamic State-held land to the west of the city, close to the border with Syria.

British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson said intelligence suggested that Baghdadi had “vacated the scene”, but he did not say where the Islamic State leader had gone to.

Mosul still has a population of 1.5 million people, much more than any of the other cities captured by Islamic State two years ago in Iraq and Syria.

Iraqi troops and Kurdish peshmerga fighters have closed in on it for two weeks from the north, from the eastern Nineveh plains and up the River Tigris from the south.

The Hashid Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation) forces of mainly Shi’ite militias joined the campaign on Saturday, launching an offensive to cut off any supply or escape to the west.

The leader of the Badr Organisation, the largest of the Popular Mobilisation militias, said his forces would cut off the main western supply route on Thursday, leaving Islamic State surrounded.

A spokesman for the militias later said they had made progress but had not closed off the western flank, and had seen from a distance some cars leaving Mosul.

Senior Kurdish politician Hoshiyar Zebari said that Islamic State blew up parts of a bridge over the Tigris linking the two sides of Mosul, to try to prevent fighters abandoning the eastern districts.

“It’s the most important bridge for them because it leads to their headquarters and residential areas (on the western side),” he told Reuters. Residents said there had been two explosion at the bridge, stopping traffic in both directions.

TARGETING TURKEY AND SAUDI

In his speech, Baghdadi called for attacks on Turkey and Saudi Arabia, saying the Sunni countries had both sided with the enemy in a war targeting Sunni Islam.

Islamic State fighters should “unleash the fire of their anger” on Turkish troops fighting them in Syria, and take the battle into Turkey.

“Turkey entered the zone of your operations, so attack it, destroy its security, and sow horror within it. Put it on your list of battlefields. Turkey entered the war with the Islamic State with cover and protection from Crusader jets,” he said referring to the U.S.-led air coalition.

Baghdadi also told his followers to launch “attack after attack” in Saudi Arabia, targeting security forces, government officials, members of the ruling Al Saud family and media outlets, for “siding with the infidel nations in the war on Islam and the Sunna (Sunni Muslims) in Iraq and Syria”.

Islamic State has been on the retreat since last year in both Iraq and Syria, in the face of a myriad of different forces seeking to crush the hardline group.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said the conflict with Islamic State had caused colossal damage to the country, already struggling to cope with low oil prices. He said infrastructure losses alone amounted to $35 billion.

]]>Iraqi army aims to reach site of Islamic State executions south of Mosulhttp://newsabc.net/iraqi-army-aims-to-reach-site-of-islamic-state-executions-south-of-mosul/
Fri, 28 Oct 2016 04:02:06 +0000http://newsabc.net/?p=4592The Iraqi army was trying on Thursday to reach a town south of Mosul where Islamic State has reportedly executed dozens to deter the population against any attempt to support the U.S.-led offensive on the jihadists’ last major city stronghold in Iraq. Eleven days into what is expected to be the biggest ground offensive in …

]]>The Iraqi army was trying on Thursday to reach a town south of Mosul where Islamic State has reportedly executed dozens to deter the population against any attempt to support the U.S.-led offensive on the jihadists’ last major city stronghold in Iraq.Iraqi pro-government forces are seen in Qayyara.REUTERS/Alaa Al-Marjani

Eleven days into what is expected to be the biggest ground offensive in Iraq since the U.S.-led invasion of 2003, army and federal police units were fighting off sniper fire and suicide car bombs south of Hammam al-Alil, the site of the reported executions, an Iraqi military spokesman said.

The militants shot dead dozens of prisoners there, most of them former members of the Iraqi police and army, taken from villages the group has been forced to abandon as the troops advanced, officials in the region said on Wednesday.

The executions were meant “to terrorize the others, those who are in Mosul in particular”, and also to get rid of the prisoners, said Abdul Rahman al-Waggaa, a member of the Nineveh provincial council. Some of the families of those executed are also held in Hammam al-Alil, he said.

U.N. human rights spokesman Rupert Colville on Tuesday said Islamic State fighters had reportedly killed scores of people around Mosul in the last week.

A Reuters correspondent met relatives of hostages south of Mosul. One of them was a police officer who had returned to see the family that he had left behind when his village fell under the militants’ control two years ago.

“I’m afraid they will keep pulling them back from village to village until they get to Mosul. And then they will disappear,” he said, asking not be identified to protect family members still in the hands of the fighters.

Reuters also spoke to a woman and an elderly man who were part of group of families forced to march two to three days to reach Mosul from the villages of Safiya and Ellezaga, about 30 km (nearly 20 miles) and 50 km (30 miles) to the south.

Children and the elderly were released when they arrived in Mosul, on Tuesday, and told to stay with relatives, they said, speaking on the phone from one of the few places where there is still telephone coverage, on the city’s edges.

A resident of Mosul, Rayyan, said he saw the families when they arrived in the city, “their bare feet bleeding and covered with dust as if coming from under the rubble.”

“We cried when we saw them,” he said.

FIERCE DEFENSE

Islamic State fighters are keeping up their fierce defense of the southern approaches to Mosul, which has held up Iraqi troops there and forced an elite army unit east of the city to put a more rapid advance on hold.

The fall of Mosul would mark Islamic State’s effective defeat in Iraq.

The city is many times bigger than any other that the ultra-hardline militant group has ever captured, and it was from its Grand Mosque in 2014 that the group’s leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, declared a “caliphate” that also spans parts of Syria.

U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter said on Tuesday an attack on Raqqa, Islamic State’s main stronghold in Syria, would start while the battle of Mosul is still unfolding. It was the first official suggestion that U.S.-backed forces in both countries could mount simultaneous operations to crush the caliphate.

The front lines east and north of Mosul have moved much closer to the edges of the city than the southern front and the combat ahead is likely to get more deadly as 1.5 million residents remain in the city.

Worst-case U.N. forecasts see up to a million people being uprooted. U.N. aid agencies said the fighting had so far forced about 16,000 people to flee.

“Assessments have recorded a significant number of female-headed households, raising concerns around the detention or capture of men and boys,” the office of the U.N. humanitarian coordinator for Iraq said on Wednesday.

The coordinator, Lise Grande, told Reuters on Tuesday that a mass exodus could happen, maybe within the next few days.

CHEMICAL WEAPONS

It was also possible that Islamic State fighters could resort to “rudimentary chemical weapons” to hold back the impending assault, she said.

The militants are suspected of setting on fire a sulfur plant south of Mosul last week, filling the air with toxic gasses that caused breathing problems for hundreds of civilians.

A senior U.S. official said about 50,000 Iraqi ground troops are taking part in the offensive, including a core force of 30,000 from the government’s armed forces, 10,000 Kurdish fighters and the remaining 10,000 from police and local volunteers. About 5,000 to 6,000 jihadists are dug in, according to Iraqi military estimates.

Roughly 5,000 U.S. troops are also in Iraq. More than 100 of them are embedded with Iraqi and Kurdish peshmerga forces advising commanders and helping coalition air power to hit targets. They are not deployed on front lines.

The warring sides are not giving casualty figures in their own ranks or among civilians, each claiming to have killed hundreds of enemy fighters.

The Iraqi army said it killed 772 insurgents since the start of the offensive on Oct. 17, and captured 23. About 100 towns, villages and hamlets were taken back, it added in a statement.